JOJO HAD NEVER fallen asleep with anyone who wasn’t her mom and dad or Harper, but being tangled with Kevin on the couch was nice. She could see what people got out of the whole thing. His body was big and warm, a long pillow with no give. As she’d drawn a blanket over them, he’d turned so that he was spooning her. Jojo held her breath—it was so intimate, this cradling. Her whole body was tense, and she didn’t know how to arrange her limbs. But Kevin was good at it, and he slung an arm around her waist, pulling her against him. It felt safe. Good. Kevin rested the phone on the edge of the couch and kept one hand on it. “One hour,” he mumbled into her ear.
Or less. The phone was plugged in, and Jojo planned to look at the tracking more often if she could. How could she rest when Harper was out there? Hurting? Maybe dying?
But sleep dragged her down, and the first four times the alarm went off, they both jumped. All four times Jojo’s phone hadn’t moved, still sitting in front of Darren Dixon’s house.
The fifth time, at almost 2:00 P.M., the phone was moving.
“Mom!” Jojo kicked her way out from under the blanket, ignoring the ooof that came from Kevin behind her. She raced through the living room and took the stairs two at a time. “Mom!”
When she reached her parents’ bedroom, her mother was already standing. Okay, she was swaying, one hand out for balance, her face rumpled with sleep. “He’s moving?”
“He’s moving.”
Kevin stomped up the stairs, too, and peered over Jojo’s shoulder.
Mom grabbed the phone out of her hands. “Where?”
“Hey!”
But her mother held tight. She sat on the edge of the bed.
Jojo climbed up behind her and motioned for Kevin to do the same.
He hesitated.
“Hop up,” Mom said. “We can all watch.”
The image was small on the map, just a blue dot. It moved slowly down the freeway, though it was probably going the speed limit or more.
“Yes,” said Mom.
Jojo felt a chill shoot up her arms. They would get him—and then what? “Do you have a plan?” Desperately, she needed her mother to say yes again.
Instead Mom just shook her head and said, “Shhh.” As if she needed silence to watch a screen.
Kevin said, “He’s going to San Bernal.”
Mom nodded, and they watched the blue dot take the freeway exit that led to the Bernal Bridge. “Fuck.”
Jojo’s stomach clenched. “Why?”
“Why what?” Mom didn’t look at her, just kept her eyes on the phone.
“Why ‘fuck’?”
Mom just glanced at her, her gaze tight, as if Jojo had done something wrong.
But Jojo figured it out. “The police department. He’s going to report you?”
“Probably. Although, jurisdiction-wise he should know enough to report it in the city it happened in—” Mom took a breath. “Or he’s . . .”
Going to meet up with other cops. To talk about it. Together.
Mom finally continued, “Yeah, probably to report me.”
“Will you lose your job?” It seemed like a funny thing to worry about right now, but Jojo still needed to ask.
“I might.”
That wasn’t the right answer. Mom was supposed to say, It’ll be okay. Don’t worry about it. We’ll fix this.
“Will Dad?” Jojo hated that her voice squeaked.
“I don’t know.”
The dot on the screen took all the turns that led to the PD.
Jojo didn’t realize she was stone-rigid until her mother said, “Hey. Breathe.” Jojo panted, and, next to her, Kevin did the same. They all had morning breath even though it was afternoon, and while it should have been disgusting, Jojo realized that she almost liked it. They smelled like a den of animals.
She could be feral if she needed to be.
The dot reached the department.
It stopped at the corner, where the light was.
And then it kept moving.
“Holy shit,” said Mom.
“Where’s he going?” Jojo scooted closer to Mom, moving onto her knees. She leaned her body against her mother, and Mom leaned back. “I mean, I know we don’t know. Where do you think he’s going?”
Kevin’s voice rumbled. “He’s going to the Old Coast. My house.”
But the dot kept moving, traveling down Smythe and taking a right on Fifteenth. Left on Rose. Right on Seventeenth.
At the corner of Hind and Seventeenth, the blue dot disappeared.
“Wait.” Jojo reached out her hand, but her mother jerked the phone closer to her chest.
“Where did it go?” Mom refreshed the screen. Nothing. She looked at Jojo. “Where did it go?”
“Let me have it.” Jojo didn’t think her mother had done anything wrong, but who knew?
“Fine.”
Jojo closed the app.
Reopened it.
Nothing.
“Your phone died.”
“No.” Mom’s face was pale.
“He’s moving too much—it’s not like he could have found it while he was driving. And if it had just dropped off the car, it would still be transmitting. I think it just died.”
“Fuck.”
Jojo watched, horrified, as tears rose in Mom’s eyes. “Oh, no.” She lightly punched her mother on the shoulder. “Don’t cry. If you go, I’ll go.”
Mom bit her bottom lip. “I’m sorry. I should have charged it longer, but I was in the jail without it and just plugged it in while I was driving to his house. . . . Oh, my God, we’ve lost him.”
Kevin, silent till now, scooted forward and took the phone from Jojo’s hand. “Nothing we can do about it. But what can we figure out from where he was going?”
Mom rubbed her face, hard. “Okay. Okay, yeah.”
Their three heads converged again. Mom studied the streets with new interest, zooming in and out while Kevin held the phone.
Jojo tried not to let the panic in her breastbone boil up and over.
“Okay,” said Mom again. “He was a cop in this town for eighteen years. He knows the city as well as anyone. If he were going to the east end, he would have come off the Forsyth Street exit, not over the bridge. That means he wasn’t going farther than Grand. And he avoided Bornemouth, which would have been faster for almost everything in that area, so that means he’s close to where he means to go.”
Kevin pointed at the screen, at the tangle of streets in the middle. “What’s there?”
“Some older houses, a few Victorians, and a crap-ton of densely populated apartment buildings.”
Jojo leaned closer. “Any other cops live there?”
“I don’t think so. No, definitely not.”
Jojo shook her head as she imagined the area. She’d flyered for the police Tip-a-Cop night in that area. “Too many doors. Even if we found his car, we wouldn’t be able to knock at every single one. And it would take hours to drive all those tiny streets looking for his car.”
“Even if we found the right door, he wouldn’t answer it,” said Mom. She pressed her palms together. “This is reminding me of something, though.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something about this street here—off of Hind—this feels familiar to me.”
How did that help? Mom knew every street in San Bernal like the back of her hand, first from being on the street, then for dispatching for so many years. Everything probably felt familiar to her. “We’ll never find him.”
“No, there’s something.” Mom stood, bouncing the bed as she did so. “I’ve got to go to dispatch. I’ll need to take your phone, but have Kevin text me if you need anything.”
“But you said they don’t trust you there—”
“I’ll figure it out. My brain is trying to tell me something, and I’m too tired to work it out without CAD.”
“What’s CAD?” said Kevin.
“The computer system in dispatch,” said Jojo. She stood. “I want to go with you.”
“You stay here. This won’t be a pleasure visit.”
Like anything was right now. They were in hell, and Mom wanted to split up. “Mama. Please let me come with you.”
But her mother was moving too fast. She tore off her shirt like she didn’t even care that Kevin was sitting right there. Jojo’s face flushed. At least Mom was wearing a bra, albeit an old gray one. She put on another shirt and darted into the bathroom to brush her teeth.
“You need to eat.” The words came out of Jojo’s mouth automatically—the words her mother had said to her a hundred-million times over the years.
Mom noticed it, too. Her hairbrush stopped moving, and she looked out the open bathroom door. “You’re right. I do. Can you do me a favor and get me one of those protein bars in the pantry?”
As if he’d been waiting for something—anything—to do, Kevin jumped up. “I’ll get that for you. Be right back.”
“Thanks.”
Mom came out and pulled off her jeans then, and her underwear. She slid into a fresh pair and pulled on new jeans.
Jojo said, “Thank God you didn’t do that while he was in here.”
Mom smiled thinly. “I realized by your faces when I took my shirt off that taking off my pants might be a bit too much. Sorry that was embarrassing.”
It wasn’t true—it would have been any other day. But today Jojo wasn’t embarrassed. Still, it was light talk—it felt like what she would say on a normal weekday. “Yeah, I would have died.”
In midstep her mother paused. A quick freeze.
“Sorry,” Jojo mumbled. “You know what I mean.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Don’t you dare.”
Mom nodded sharply. “Okay, then. We have a deal.”